Latest news with #UKCompanies
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Foreign Buyers in $10 Billion Scramble for UK Takeover Targets
Foreign buyers are feverishly snapping up UK companies at a time when London is struggling to maintain the size of its stock market and attract new listings. Almost $10 billion worth of deals targeting UK firms emerged on Monday alone this week, when US buyout firm Advent confirmed a £3.7 billion ($5 billion) takeover proposal for Spectris Plc, a maker of precision and testing equipment and software, and Qualcomm Inc. agreed a roughly $2.4 billion deal for London-listed semiconductor company Alphawave IP Group Plc. Both transactions carried premiums comfortably above 80%.
Telegraph
18-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Starmer is kidding himself if he thinks cosying up to the EU will boost Britain
Monday sees a summit in London between the UK and the EU which could lead to what the British government terms 'an EU reset'. What should we expect? A good deal of what is going to be discussed concerns defence. The likely agreement here is largely going to be formalising the existing situation. Britain and France have been leading the attempt to establish a 'Coalition of the Willing' to support Ukraine. And it has been obvious for some time that with the US growing increasingly weary of paying for the defence of Europe, European countries, including the UK, are having to step up to the plate. Nevertheless, there is a potential economic benefit to the UK from a defence agreement. It seems likely that UK companies will be able to bid for and win defence contracts funded by the EU's €150bn (£126bn) defence scheme. This would undoubtedly be good news. But it is hardly a game changer. To put this apparently enormous sum into perspective, it represents about 4pc of the UK's GDP. So if British firms were able to win about 10pc of the contracts available, this would represent a total boost to UK demand of just under 0.5pc of our GDP. But this boost would be spread over a number of years so the impact on GDP in any one year is likely to be pretty small. The deal may also involve removing customs checks on British food exports into the EU, which would be a considerable boost to this sector. The downside, however, is that, once again, our fishermen are likely to be sold out by the British Government in order to secure a deal. Moreover, a removal of checks on British food exports to the EU is likely to come at a higher price, namely British agreement to so-called 'dynamic alignment'. This means adopting all new EU regulations with regard to the production and movement of food and food products. Making such an agreement would render it extremely difficult for the UK to forge a full Free Trade Agreement with the United States, since the treatment of US food exports has, all along, been one of the principle sticking points. Furthermore, if we were to agree to 'dynamic alignment' on foodstuffs, we could easily find ourselves pressured into adopting dynamic alignment with regard to all other forms of production and distribution. In that event, we would effectively be back inside the EU's regulatory ambit even though we were no longer a member of the bloc. This would be a betrayal of all those who voted for Brexit since the ability to fashion our own regulatory regime was one of the principle sources of potential gain from leaving the EU. This Government finds it difficult to understand that economic growth is forged by risk-taking businesses, not governments signing agreements and treaties and that over-regulation stifles business. You can see how the changing shape of international relations is pushing the UK closer to Europe in a number of spheres. But the economic urge to align more closely with the EU surely derives from the belief, widely held in the Government and the economic establishment, that Brexit has cost the UK dearly. The number that has somehow become lodged in the collective consciousness is a cost from Brexit to the UK of 4pc of GDP, even though this figure has not been satisfactorily established. Indeed, believing it requires quite a leap of faith. It is striking, for instance, that since Brexit, UK exports to the rest of the world have been just as weak as our exports to the EU. How can this be explained by Brexit? A more likely explanation is that UK exports in general have been damaged by some other factor, probably to do with the sectoral composition of British exports. As the trade expert Phil Radford recently explained in 'Less than Meets the Eye – the Real Impact of Brexit on UK Trade' (published by Policy Exchange), UK exports have been strongly affected by the weakness of its two largest goods export sectors: cars and aerospace. The aerospace industry was devastated by the impact of Covid-19 as orders for aircraft plunged, while the car industry has been going through a period of costly upheaval triggered by net zero. Moreover, Radford also points out the significance of the collapse in exports of clothing and footwear to the EU since our departure. Yet before the fall-off, our production in these sectors was extremely low. In fact, these 'exports' were in reality re-exports of goods that had been imported into the UK for re-export to the Continent, thereby adding virtually nothing to the UK's GDP. This is not to say that I think Brexit has brought the UK decided economic benefits so far. On the contrary, I always thought it likely that there would be some short-term economic loss inflicted by Brexit. And there probably has been – although its quantification is extremely difficult and I suspect the figure of 4pc is much too high. But it must be remembered that Brexit was a once in a generation event. And we only formally left the EU on January 1, 2021, not yet even five years ago. It is really rather early to be attempting an overall assessment, particularly since the political, economic and military scene on the Continent is so uncertain. The UK Government is right to be trying to improve our relations with our close neighbours on defence and related matters. But it must not kid itself into believing that on economic matters the EU is the future. In economic matters, it remains a laggard, dogged by over-regulation, high taxes and out-of-control welfare spending, all of which we should ourselves be trying to escape from. Most importantly, however difficult it may be to do business with Donald Trump's administration, it needs to be remembered that America will still be there long after Trump has left the White House.
